Five Rules of Content Marketing
Content marketing works. That simple premise is why more and more marketers are making content marketing a core part of their lead generation strategies. One of the reasons that they work is that providing high-quality content helps build trust and rapport with prospects and customers, making it easier for them to make an eventual purchasing or renewal decision. It’s not a new idea. Early in my career, I worked at Shell Oil Company in Houston, where the “Come to Shell for Answers” booklets were a primary part of our marketing communications budget. Back then, we called it thought leadership marketing, Read More
SEO Fairy Tales Without Happy Endings
We share office space with Vertical Nerve, a web analytics, search marketing, and mobile marketing company. In other words, they’re Google Analytics geeks, who understand exactly how to measure, monitor and tweak marketing campaigns to get the results you want. I’m not, even though I’ve known about Google longer than most people on the planet. Months before Sergei Brinn and Larry Page announced their new search engine, I attended a hush-hush meeting (after signing “binding mutual non-disclosure agreements and information embargoes” explained with great seriousness by two teams of lawyers), and saw one of the very first demos of the product that Read More
Facebook Timeline Steps to Take Now
It’s been about a month since Facebook implemented the new Timeline layout for business pages. When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s new page design was first announced, the reaction was less than positive. Like it or not, there are some features in the new layout that can make a big difference in how user-friendly business pages are for both the page manager and customers or prospects who “Like” the page. Here are some basic steps every marketer needs to take now to catch up with the new Facebook Timeline. I’ll admit that when Timeline first came out, I was among the Read More
Pinning Email to Pinterest for Faster ROI
Pinterest is the fastest growing social media site, far outstripping other recent entries into the social media sweepstakes. But Pinterest isn’t for everyone. People either love it or hate it. Forbes blogger David Coursey called it “Facebook with training wheels” in a recent article in which he said that Facebook’s purchase of Instagram would kill Pinterest. The same day, CNBC aired a story titled “Why Pine for the Pinterest Customer? They’re Worth More.” Here are three of the comments that business owners or marketers made during the CNBC segment: “Customers who come to (our) website from Pinterest have a 70 percent larger ticket Read More
Five Steps to Reviving B2B Email Results
When did you last open an unsolicited e-mail and think “Hey, this is really useful?” When did you last actually download the pictures for an unsolicited e-mail? There are those who make pretty convincing arguments that B2B email marketing is a dying art. I’m not one of them, although from a personal angle, I’ve seen more than my share of email campaigns that seem to be intent on killing it. The problem is that marketers have over-killed email marketing by getting it wrong, by thinking that because it was cheap, it was the best way “in” to a new prospect. And Read More
Using Case Studies to Make Your Sales Point
Satisfied, happy customers extolling the virtues of a product or service after they’ve tried it and gotten the results they wanted. It’s the one sales and marketing message that never goes out of date, and never gets old. Finding customers willing to do that isn’t always easy, which is why using case studies isn’t first on every marketer’s to do list, every day. Some of our largest clients consider our products to be part of their “secret sauce” and won’t let us name them. Yet one of the key selling points we make in every sales presentation is based around proven, Read More
How to Give Stellar Presentations
Earlier this year, I was standing in front of a room filled with Indian entrepreneurs. At first, it looked as if I’d be speaking to a half-empty room – but noted Indian investor Vinod Khosla was speaking to a full-house next door and the overflow crowd drifted into the next open door where I was waiting to speak. Soon, I was in front of a room filled mostly with people who’d rather be listening to the hometown hero next door, covering a topic I had not previously talked about. I wasn’t sure I understood the culture in India. So I was Read More
5 Things to Do When You’ve Published New Content
Most marketers understand that content marketing is no longer optional – it’s a requirement. So nearly all of us write blogs, publish white papers, and create a variety of eBooks and PDF’s that are available for download on our websites. At SXSW this year, Jay Baer of The Content Marketing Institute said the biggest content marketing challenges revolve around creating and publishing content. He reported that the institute’s surveys show that the biggest content marketing challenges include: Producing the kind of content that engages prospects or customers (41%) Producing enough content (20%) Finding the budget to produce content (18%) Lack of Read More
Making Email Deliver Financial ROI
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to most marketers when the researchers at MEC Labs/Marketing Sherpa published this week’s marketing graphic: a look at how the ways in which email marketing campaigns are measured has changed over the last two years. How to make email deliver measurable results is a hot topic for nearly every marketer in the post-recession economy. Why? Because if there is one lesson that the recession taught us all, it’s that financial return on investment trumps almost every other measure by which marketers are measured. Here’s the graphic that Marketing Sherpa published, showing the year Read More
Baby Steps Towards Online Reputation Management
It seems like one thing that comes into sharp focus every time there’s a political campaign is just how fast a crisis fueled by Twitter, blog posts, Facebook, YouTube and other social media can strike. That’s true whether you’re a political candidate or a marketer with a brand’s reputation to build or protect. So we all need to take some baby steps toward online reputation management – if they aren’t already part of your multi-channel marketing communications plan, now may be the time to add them. It all starts with social media monitoring that tracks your online reputation. If you don’t know Read More
